Butterfly Rest Stop, Frisco, TX, 2024
Echelman’s artwork titled Butterfly Rest Stop is a dynamic aerial sculpture installation for Kaleidoscope Park, a vibrant new public space in North Texas that features over 200 works of art.
Echelman's art practice explores the interconnectedness of humans and nature in the public sphere, and stems from the artist's fascination with interconnected systems of the natural world of which we are a small part.
This sculpture project focuses on the role butterflies and other pollinators play in our Earth's ecosystem. Monarch numbers have declined substantially in recent years due to the loss of milkweed along their migratory routes, which resonated with Echelman’s focus on the interconnection within larger cycles and systems in our physical world.
The aesthetics of the artwork explore the form, pattern, and color of native species of the milkweed flowers that sustain the Monarch butterfly throughout its migration. Two five-petaled sculptural forms composed of soft braided fiber nestle together and float gently in the air. A total of 3,384 plants which sustain pollinators, including milkweed, are part of the artwork.
This artwork is also a conceptual inquiry into perception, as it poses questions about how a flower appears to the eyes and minds of a species which sees in a completely different manner from human beings. Unlike homosapiens, Monarch butterflies have compound eyes which enable them to simultaneously see up, down, forward, backward and to the sides . Also unlike humans, they are unable to see these images united into one continuous picture – more like a series of still photos rather than a movie.
“It's meaningful to me to be asked to help sculpt this new public park for North Texas. When I learned the Monarch butterflies migrate through the area each October, I wanted to plant milkweed below to help create a sustaining pollinator corridor, and to suspend my first flower-inspired sculptures in the sky to remind us of our interconnected destinies, and of the interconnected systems of the natural world of which we are a small part. This green space invites us all to gather and celebrate the fusion of nature, art, and community.” - Janet Echelman
Sculpture by the numbers
791,788 knots
88.9 miles twine in netting
3,423 lbs weight of sculpture
165 ft length of total sculpture (including rope structure)
133 ft length of sculpture net
65 ft highest point
3,384 plants which sustain pollinators, including milkweed
106 mph design wind load
40 ft depth of concrete foundations
9,090 sf projected area of net in plan
3,967 sf surface area of netting